Great Violinists And Pianists eBook

He made almost yearly tours to the Continent for concert-giving
purposes, and kept his friendship with the great composers
of the Continent green by personal contact. Beethoven
was the god of his musical idolatry, and his pilgrimage
to Vienna was always delightful to him. When
Beethoven, in the early part of 1827, was in dire distress
from poverty, just before his death, it was to Moscheles
that he applied for assistance; and it was this generous
friend who promptly arranged the concert with the
Philharmonic Society by which one hundred pounds sterling
was raised to alleviate the dying moments of the great
man whom his own countrymen would have let starve,
even as they had allowed Schubert and Mozart to suffer
the direst want on their deathbeds.

An adequate record of Moscheles’s life during
the twenty years of his London career would be a pretty
full record of all matters of musical interest occurring
during this time. In 1832 he was made one of the
directors of the Philharmonic Society, and in 1837-’38
he conducted with signal success Beethoven’s
“Ninth Symphony.” When Sir Henry Bishop
resigned, in 1845, Moscheles was made the conductor,
and thereafter wielded the baton over this orchestra,
the noblest in England. Among the yearly pleasures
to which our pianist looked forward with the greatest
interest were the visits of Mendelssohn, between whom
and Moscheles there was the most tender friendship.
Whole pages of his diary are given up to an account
of Mendelssohn’s doings, and to the most enthusiastic
expression of his love and admiration for one of the
greatest musical geniuses of modern times.

We can not attempt to follow up the placid and gentle
current of Moscheles’s life, flowing on to ever-increasing
honor and usefulness, but hasten to the period when
he left England in 1846, to become associated with
Mendelssohn in the conduct of the Leipzig Conservatorium,
then recently organized. Mendelssohn lived but
a few months after achieving this great monument of
musical education, but Moscheles remained connected
with it for nearly twenty years, and to his great
zeal, knowledge, and executive skill is due in large
measure the solid success of the institution.
Mendelssohn’s early death, while yet in the
very prime of creative genius, was a stunning blow
to Moscheles; more so, perhaps, than would have occurred
from the loss of any one except his beloved wife,
the mother of his five children. Our musician
died himself, in Leipzig, March 10, 1870, and his passage
from this world was as serene and quiet as his passage
through had been. He lived to see his daughters
married to men of high worth and position, and his
sons substantially placed in life. Perhaps few
distinguished musicians have lived a life of such
monotonous happiness, unmarked by those events which,
while they give romantic interest to a career, make
the gift at the expense of so much personal misery.